Hi! I'm a cinematographer and media entrepreneur. As a filmmaker, I use cinematic storytelling to make powerful, impactful connections. And as an entrepreneur, I firmly believe that one of the most powerful ways to change the world is through businesses run with empathy and soul. I get to be a creative artist while exploring the art of business, and for that I'm grateful. Sign up for my newsletter to read interesting bits about modern media and film.
Shutterstock brings tiers to my eyes
Hey there!
Welcome to this week's edition. Know anyone who'd benefit from getting these? Point them in the direction of the newly-refreshed Footager webpage!
Here’s what’s in this week’s email:
- Shutterstock's royalty tiers
- Tip: quantity is your friend.
Shutterstock's royalty tiers
Every year, Shutterstock sends out this nice notification:
In last week's email I talked about iStock's royalty levels, which allow exclusive contributors to earn a higher royalty percentage as their files hit certain thresholds of downloads during the calendar year.
Shutterstock does the same thing, but for all of their contributors. Here's their reason:
I'll let you decide for yourself whether this is a thinly-veiled "reason" that simply allows this publicly-held company to keep more profits for their shareholders.
At any rate it is what it is. Here's what their tier levels look like, broken down by total licenses (number of downloads) and corresponding royalty rates. This is taken from my personal contributor dashboard:
So you can see I'm in Level 3. That's pretty good considering it's January 10... but most of those 51+ downloads have been limited-web-use licenses which pay very little per download. Once my account hits 251 downloads this year, from that point onward I'll be earning 30% royalties. Level 4 is where I ended last year, and I think that's likely typical for the average contributor.
And that leads me to this week's tip...
Tip: Quantity is your friend.
The more files you have for sale, the more likely you are to see sales.
This helps with Shutterstock's contributor tiers because if you're making more sales, that reduces the amount of time it gets to level up during the calendar year.
And also, who wouldn't want to have more sales?
I've said for a long time that a great strategy to have when selling stock footage is to focus on:
Quality
Quantity
Variety
In other words, make good work across a wide range of subject matter — and submit a LOT of it.
That's it for this week! In the next week or two, final numbers will be in for 2022's earnings. Keep an eye out — I'll break it down soon to give you some insight into how things work once you've got a good stock footage collection established.
-- Chad
Chad Stembridge
Hi! I'm a cinematographer and media entrepreneur. As a filmmaker, I use cinematic storytelling to make powerful, impactful connections. And as an entrepreneur, I firmly believe that one of the most powerful ways to change the world is through businesses run with empathy and soul. I get to be a creative artist while exploring the art of business, and for that I'm grateful. Sign up for my newsletter to read interesting bits about modern media and film.
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